I've had this discussion yesterday with a colleague of mine a bit older than me, he doesn't think that technology will kill jobs, he thinks that the government will probably prevent self driving cars and the like.
I think the opposite, I live in a country where transport is the main employer in the country, I think that in the next two decades all these jobs will be lost and transport company will have enough lobbying power to pass any laws they want.
We were talking about retirement age and I was wondering how we could push it later when there will be less and less jobs, and eventually we will have to admit that a big portion of the population won't be able / needed to work, and that I will probably be part of it.
Farming was automized, so we transformed to other jobs. No problem there ( thank god it was possible)
Industrialisation made it possible for a company export to a total new market and it made worldwide selling possible ==> New markets. No problem there
Computer appeared. Untill now, the effect wasn't big. They lines are all dedicated and require huge investments. Humans are still required for putting chocolates in a box and getting it out of the "container" ( although it could be automatised with a huge investment).
What's going to happen when those robots with an investment cost of 10.000$ to replace an employee. Can learn putting chocolates in a box with supervised learning and no other investment.
Who's going to get work and where is the money coming from if all jobs are slowly being replaced / automized. I think there is a lot of trouble on the road ahead. To what usefull jobs will all drivers/truckers/taxi's transform to for still being usefull. What jobs are next, accounting perhaps. And where will it stop?
And don't say, they have to learn something new. The people that are going to be replaced by total automation ( robots) in the workforce are (mostly) workers in the first place and i don't think a lot of them are smart enough, to do something new that won't be replaced by automation < 3 years when it begins.
I'm not trying to offend someone, but i'm pretty hopeless because i don't see a way out for a lot of people.